Brainland

Thanks to Noel Jenkins for pointing out this fantastic map of Brainland! Click on the picture to find out more...

South Georgia...

An interesting view from the South Georgia webcam this evening!

Alphabet of Nations...

Both Yr7 and Yr12 were rather taken with this today (as was a certain Head of Humanities!) so I thought the rest of you better have a look as well!



Prize for the first person to leave a comment telling me the capital of West Xylophone!

Earth - The Power of the Planet

Hopefully, you will have just finished watching Earth - The Power of the Planet. Tonight's spectacular programme was the first of a new series on BBC2, and looked at volcanoes - "the most important force in the creation of the planet as we know it today"...

If you missed the programme, and didn't see Dr Iain Stewart abseiling into a lava lake, then it is repeated on Sunday at 6.oopm - make sure you are watching!! (You can also pre-order the DVD of the series from the BBC Shop... I wonder if Santa reads Geogtastic...)

SNOW!!!

The view from my front door about an hour ago!! I'm sure I get far more excited than someone my age should about snow, but hey ho!

Indonesian Volcanoes...

Not much in the news yesterday about the eruption of Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) in Indonesia...Indonesians are more concerned with the prospect of an eruption of Mt Kelud... More here from the Times, and a picture gallery here.

East Coast Storm Surge...

Fortunately, despite a lot of local disruption, it seems that things on the East Coast were not as bad as anticipated...

There were still some pretty big waves though!

The picture above was taken at Walcott, in Norfolk, and is one of the BBC's "In Pictures" series.

PENGUINS!!!

They're back!!

For anyone who STILL hasn't seen this fantastic South Georgia webcam, click here.

Storm Surge Warnings

It's probably a good thing this evening that we are almost as far away from the coast as is possible... This is what the Environment Agency's Flood Warning website looks like at the moment:

There are currently 6 "severe flood warnings" in place in Norfolk and Suffolk, with threats of "extreme danger to life and property", as well as 9 "flood warnings" and 24 "flood watches" along the east coast of England, and the Thames Barrier will be closed later this evening.

The reason for all this, according to the Met Office, is a combination of north-westerly winds exceeding 50mph, low pressure and high tides. Tide levels are predicted to be almost 3 metres higher than normal tide levels - something that happens, on average, once every 20 years.

More from the BBC here.

Witches' knickers?!

You will no doubt already know my feelings about plastic bags... I've written about them a number of times - and Yr8 did some fantastic work on plastic bags last year... But I've never, until this evening, heard them referred to as "witches' knickers"!! According to an excellent new article from the BBC though, that is what they are called in Ireland (where, by the way, they'll cost you 9p each in a supermarket).

Councillors in Brighton and Hove recently voted on a bag ban, asking shops to stop handing them out to customers, and the village of Modbury in Devon have been pleased with their bag ban trial and have just made the ban permanent.

Check out the BBC article to find out more - including 10 arguments FOR the plastic bag... And a great video of A Day in the Life of a Plastic Bag...

Here's a picture of the superb plastic bag collage that 8HCh (now 9NSq) produced last year...

Yr 11 - Revision....

I was pleased to hear today that some of you are thinking about revision!

For those of you who were asking about revision guides... Having worked very hard since the start of Yr10 and made sure all the work we've done is complete, the best revision guide is your exercise book!!

However... there are a good number of revision guides available from bookshops/WHSmiths, etc. These are general ones and are fairly useful. If you do buy one of these, remember that they cover all the material for all the different exam boards - make sure that you refer back to the specification that you were given at the start of Yr10 to prevent you a) spending time learning things you don't need to know, and b) panicking about things that you think we should have done in class!

There is also a revision guide that has been written specifically for the course that we do (OCR C - Bristol Project) - it is slightly more expensive, but covers all the topics that you need to know, with case studies, practice questions and information and advice about the DME. It is by Liz Hattersley, and published by Heinemann. We have some copies left at school - come and ask if you want one! Otherwise, if you click on the picture below it will take you to the Amazon site where you can order a copy.